I wrote this Tuesday but didn’t have time to post even this brief little fortune cookie until Wednesday evening.

Day one back in the classroom involved memorizing seating charts, figuring out who left over break, and who the new students are. I also spent a little time choosing poetry and stories from the course anthology while conceiving a thematic to link them into a unit plan. Designing a unit is sort of like making a mixed tape; you ask yourself what themes will play well to the intended audience and what follows what given conceptual overlap. I am doing Zora Neal Hurston into Langston Hughes into Poe into Marquez into Neruda into Faulkner into Chopin into Tan into Hawthorn. That is my sixteen week plan for sophomoric literary bliss.

Since I wrote the above paragraph I’ve been busy with another day of school. I also got a new front axel and four new tires on my van (road trip?). That repair has needed to happen for awhile. I bought a climbing harness and such for my coming membership at Upper Limits climbing gym on sale at REI – of which I am also now a member.

I have been grading like a MO-FO for my online gig. I could list and list my many doings but what fun would that be for you? You like more universal anecdotes with a humorous take on the macabre mundane-ities of modernity.

The cat, Ajax, is learning chess. He is very good at rolling the glass castle in small circles and seems addicted to doing so.

The snake is chill when not pooping on me (twice now). Feeding the snake last week was fairly cool. I am thinking about starting another blog called The Menagerie where I just post pictures of our pets. I took twenty or so shots of the snake eating this mouse last week. I could structure whole parties around a feeding. It took about an hour for him to crush and consume a good size little rodent. I was most impressed. One reason for creating that alternate blog would be so that you wouldn’t have to see snake feeding photos if you didn’t want to. I don’t want to alienate anyone in my small readership over a little reptilian digestion.

Kat thinks I have ADD. I do certainly jump from topic to topic. I am just living on coffee of late. We have one of those machines that you can set to brew before you wake up. I’m drinking the stuff like Gator Aide; it’s keeping me in the game coach!! Speaking of which, I need to crash.